Data Driven: How Formula 1 Uses AI to Accelerate Race-day Issue Resolution

[intriguing music]

I've actually been watching Formula 1

since I was seven years old. [race cars zooming]

There's a lot going on in a Formula 1 race,

and it's not just happening on the track,

it's happening in the pit wall,

it's happening in the garage.

If you think about the time critical decisions,

in tenths of a second,

it's really an amazing feat of sporting excellence,

[race cars zooming]

but we can also augment human talent

with analytical systems, and that's where AWS

has really been trying to help Formula 1.

[helicopter blades whirring]

[soft intriguing music]

At Formula 1, we see ourself as a leader in technology,

constantly innovating to improve

as both sport and a business.

[race cars zooming]

With 24 races across five continents,

we need to identify and refine solutions very fast.

[Announcer] Through goes Hamilton.

Unbelievable stuff.

I mean, our DNA with F1 and AWS is very common.

You've got speed, innovation, and then data.

I mean, when I came to Amazon, I got super excited

because of the data.

[exciting music]

Every car has sensors and will make 1.1 million

telemetry data points per second per car.

I know it sounds kind of geeky,

but the data is what gives us the ability

to apply machine learning technology

and then to be able to drive insights.

Without that, no data, no AI.

All of those teams, all of those drivers,

they're all looking to us to provide

that massive telemetry and data piece

that feeds into our systems.

The circuit changes 24 times a year,

the weather conditions, the size of the track changes.

Now, we try and keep everything as stable as possible,

but there are always changes.

Changes means that there is the potential for errors

to be brought into the system,

and so we've got to resolve any issue

before cars go on track.

[intriguing music]

So, systems, you know, they fail.

Any given weekend, you can have a network outage

or a delay or a latency

that can affect the broadcast

or it can affect the telemetry that gets shown,

but troubleshooting them

can really be an arduous and tedious job.

What happens is, is when there is an issue,

we might have to have engineers

looking into those individual systems,

reviewing those log files individually

and tracing that problem back through,

so that these people are logging into

potentially hundreds of devices.

With that kind of complexity,

we found that it can take up to 15 engineering days

to be able to resolve a problem,

but what AI systems are really good at

is being able to consume vast amounts of data,

and so this is why we decided to build

the root cause analysis tool.

[exciting music]

The root cause analysis tool,

we refer to it as the RCA tool, is an AI

that integrates with over 500 data sources

across our infrastructure,

and it allows us to talk in a natural language

to all of those log files in real time.

It allows a single engineer

that maybe doesn't have a skillset within a particular area

to be able to do a root cause analysis

across the whole of our estate.

It took over three weeks in some cases

to be able to identify the source of problems.

Now with the RCA tool,

engineers can get answers within five to 10 seconds.

So it's a complete step change in the way,

you know, Formula 1 is now operating.

[cars whizzing by] [exciting music]

The engineering team absolutely love the RCA tool.

As opposed to looking at the past,

looking at the log files, and looking backwards,

we're spending much more time looking into the future.

[announcers speaking indistinctly]

because for us,

[Announcer] Around the outside.

[Chris] every second counts.

[race car zooming]

[Announcer] Good Lord, I can't believe he did that.

Sometimes, it's not about making

a huge sweeping change to Formula 1,

but about working to create marginal gains

that improve our output for the fans.

F1 is just pushing the boundaries of sport daily.

History of innovation, we love moving at speed,

we always say speed is a leadership choice.

And if you think of what they're doing,

pushing the limits when they're in those cars,

to the edge, completely to the edge,

that is why we're so excited about our relationship with F1.

[Announcer] I've never seen anything like it.

[indistinct] driving.

Enormous bravery. [race car engine revving]